I want to tell you who the Divine is for me because I think it is important for you to know who I am, and from where I come; especially if you are considering working with me as a retreat leader, spiritual companion, or meditation guide.
Please know first that I cannot tell you who the Divine is for you. For we each must meet Her/Them/Him/Ours ourselves. Neither can I tell you how best to practice, how best to meet the ground of your being, whether you experience that as God, Divine, Universe, or a shared oneness with all that is.
I was raised a Midwestern Protestant, in the Episcopal church. A place steeped in the Protestant work ethic, and where many of the most toxic of theologies and angry Sky Father are accepted the way a fish accepts water. But from a very young age the Divine Other I knew was none of those things. Because I met the Divine in dark sacred places, in the cave beneath a black walnut altar, in the cave made by my piled blankets under a blaze of stars, in the wet cool shade of the forest, and the curtains of the Northern Lights.
God/Divine/Other is beyond gender, but I use feminine pronouns by default because for two thousand years my tradition has used only masculine. We cannot fix that by using only neutral language for Other, we must correct course if we are to truly get back on track.
The Other I met there was ancient and strange. She was Grandmother, with a lap where all hurts could be healed, and she was the wild churning edge of the thunderstorm turning the sky green, heralded by the clapping hands of upside down leaves dancing in the wind. Close and intimate, and utterly Other and strange.
I am thankful that the Divine snuck into my otherwise safe, white, middle class life as she did or I might have believed the stories from Sunday school. But I didn’t, though She was just as rebelliously present in the church of my youth as she was in the wild crashing of waves on the storm lashed beaches of the Great Lakes that shaped my soul.
Today, I am a priest in that church because the Divine continues to show up in that place, often in opposition to the place itself. The church (any church) is not God and far too much of what is accepted within the church is abusive theology and has spilled blood, and poisoned our world and hearts for too long. I stay because I remain hopeful that the church can become a worthy place for the Divine’s people to know her, to heal and to grow, and to heal the world we have broken.
I do not believe for a moment our wild Divine is a blood soaked tyrant for whom only the blood of human sacrifice would suffice, not even divine blood sacrifice. It was not she who required blood, it was Empire. And down through the ages that misunderstanding has fed more and more innocent blood into the maw of Empire. Its face changes, its hunger does not. The church’s union with Empire was, is, and will always be evil.
My God is perfect, but not infallible (and gratitude for my friend and study partner Rabbi Sara for that wording). And parenting us has been a learning curve. Our relationship with her is one of learning and growth, on both sides.
She is sometimes as tender as a parent, gentle and soft, stroking my hair in Her great wide lap. And sometimes the howling soundlessness of a black hole. One who must be argued with, bartered with, who expects us to rage in the face of what we cannot understand. My cat, utterly confident in herself stands outside my door when I am “busy” and howls her abandonment and sometimes, we must stand outside the Divine’s door and howl like Whos, “We are here! We are here! We are here!”
Most importantly I know how much I do not know. I am certain of very little, and I hold on to my beliefs lightly. Because belief can make us rigid, it can set us against anyone who dares to believe differently, it can make us afraid to take on new information, to grow and to learn. And I value most the ability to grow, to learn, and to be above all kind. So I hold belief lightly, always asking where my reactions arise from and why, who I serve when I cling to an idea, and who I leave out.
I do not need, nor want you to believe like me, or practice as I do. That would make the world a dull place indeed, and would surely leave us all much poorer. I hope that all those who seek to plumb the depths of what we do not yet know, from the secrets of the furthest stars, to the depths of the human soul can become fellow adventurers, journeying together into the unknown.
If we have to be Ultimately Right then the people around us must be Ultimately Wrong. And this makes them either enemies to be destroyed, or targets to be made just like us. Neither of these options is one I am willing to entertain, neither honors the dignity of our fellow humans. And so I remain rooted in the knowledge that I have found some small kernel of truth, which I treasure, and that I will always be searching for more. I believe the people I encounter each has a gift of truth to share, whether they know it or not, whether they live that in the world or not. You are not my enemy, or a target for conversion. You are, I hope, a friend I have not yet met and a fellow traveller on this enchanted way into a future we cannot guess but that we together will build, whether we like it or not.
